


at home with a ghost

by but_seriously



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, F/M, originals fic, when will the day come that i will stop loving this dumb family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/pseuds/but_seriously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebekah and Elijah hatch a scheme to get their brothers back from the Other Side, but just as they need Klaus' help, he's disappeared off the face of the planet - and, oddly enough, so has Caroline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted on ff.net
> 
> FOR ANNE, who prompted this so long ago I can’t even remember what her prompt was—all I know is that I was cleaning out my laptop and there was seven pages of this and I couldn’t just leave it there. This is also for DJ, because holy shit she just updated you’ve a lazy laugh and a red white shirt; someone throw her a parade or something where there is confetti and pie and a bunch of people on their laptops and tablets liveblogging the whole thing.
> 
> Since I wrote the first part of this so long ago I barely remember the setting I had in mind, but in writing and re-writing this, I figured out that it’s definitely before Elena gets her humanity back. I think it goes AU pretty much after the prom episode, because in this fic Silas isn’t the one to trick Elijah into giving up the cure, but Klaus is.  
> Also, I wrote this prior to finding out that Silas can only enchant one mind at a time. ALSO prior to finding out that he’s some sexy ass Stefan doppelganger. So can we just pretend it never happened for the sake of this fic? Plz and thank.
> 
> I’d been leaving teasers sporadically on my tumblr and thought, you know what, this isn’t fair to Anne, she asked for fic and I’m going to give it to her. 
> 
> So yeah – kick your feet up, take a shot if you need to, read this goddamn fic of mine, and let me know what you think?

**at home with a ghost (who got left in the cold)**

**1\. you were a stranger in my phonebook i was acting like i knew**

 

 

 

**i.**

There's nothing to see for miles around. Anticipation swells in his chest, dulled by the ache of sharp steel and poisoned dust. He keeps his eyes closed, not that it makes a difference.

Elijah is indifferent to the darkness—he's lived in it, dreamt in it, light and sound blurring in and out of an unyielding mist about him as the white oak dagger lays buried in his chest. Sometimes he moves as if he could still be held within those dreams, disappearing into the night as though cloaked in it; his steps light and fluid as he walks through hallways, a flick of his hand and bones lay shattered at his feet.

It is the shadows that cause a stirring in his chest, something like fear, he thinks—something an Original should not be accustomed to feeling. He opens his eyes, not exactly sure what he's trying to prove, and walks on.

Darkness extends its familiar hand and he moves with it, but the shadows—forever shifting, forever whispering—leave him with an almost out-of-body experience.

 _Is that you, Henrik?_ One hand grasps the dagger in his chest and the other clawing at corners that seemed so solid and so real moments ago. He hears footsteps and a child's laughter, but no answering call. He turns and sees Niklaus stepping out from behind pillars, the slant of his cheekbones cutting through the dark, and his brother whistles and his brother grins, and his brother asks, "I'm going home. Coming this time?"

Finn would put a hand on his shoulder, his eyes hooded from years of being just a distant memory, his smile a line cut into cracked marble. Elijah tears at the hand on his shoulder, but Finn is not there, and neither is Henrik. He looks back at Niklaus, back at blood that is his but eyes that are someone else's, and says, "Yes."

Elijah wakes up to Rebekah grasping the white oak dagger in both hands, with an expression in her eyes that does not match the tilt of her lips.

One should not look so grim when smiling. In the dim light of the room she looks so much like Niklaus, and Elijah can't help it—he shudders.

.

.

He has his first shower in what Rebekah tells him has been weeks. Nik kept you pretty well hidden, she tells him, "Which is why it took me so long to find you."

He doesn't mind, touched as he is that she was so adamant on her quest to find him. He touches the hollow space in his chest, berating himself for even letting Klaus jump him as soon as he'd gotten home from Rebekah's prom.

"You really need to stop falling for that," his sister rolls her eyes.

Rebekah brings a steaming teapot of Russian tea with dark cherry preserves into his room; butters scones and tells him all the things he's missed out on over the sound of rushing water. The hot water feels good running through his hair, untangling the knots at the base of his neck, gliding down his stiff back.

Three weeks, he reminds himself. He's had worse. And Finn, he's had far worse.

But a dagger in the chest is still a dagger in the chest.

"You should have just given him the cure," Rebekah says, after spiking her tea with O negative. The poisoned dagger lies beside her saucer, and she's careful not to scrape her finger against it as she reaches for the sugar bowl. "He doesn't take too lightly to your trying to rehab some sense into him."

Elijah says nothing, just searches for something presentable to wear after his shower. He fervently hopes that Rebekah has had the sense to press some of his suits while he'd been… indisposed. He glances over at her. She's stirring her tea with all the airs and graces he'd taught her in the 17th century.

Noticing her Elijah staring, Rebekah hops to her feet and pulls out a jacket for him. Navy, clean lines and two buttons. "I've always liked how your shoulders look in these." She hands it to him and he takes it without a word. "We've got to feel and look our best when we go get our brothers back."

His sister almost laughs at the bewildered look on his face. "You sure have missed a lot."

.

.

It turns out Niklaus had been holding out on the cure all along, hadn't traded it off someplace somewhere as he'd told them. He snarls and growls and spits from his restraints, and Elijah smirks up at him. Niklaus' wrath looks absolutely laughable when he's being hung upside down in chains from his ankles, and the blood crosscutting across his face adds to the comedy of it all.

("I've had hundreds of years of practice—I am perfectly capable of inflicting pain," Rebekah tells Elijah with a gleeful look in her eyes. She places another vervain-soaked nail in Klaus' stomach and smiles as he screams at her.)

"I'm through playing your games, Niklaus," Elijah tells him. If his younger brother would just stop his yowling, he can concentrate enough to reflect on how the hilt of the white oak dagger had embedded itself into his flesh. The force in which Niklaus had rammed it into him. His fingers curl into a fist he keeps hidden in his pockets. "Where did you hide the cure?"

When Klaus merely spits a string of profanity in response, Elijah gives a nod and a serene Rebekah buries another nail in him.

.

.

It takes hours, and as Elijah had predicted, it takes days. Klaus screams, Klaus howls, and for a brief moment when Elijah gets a little too carried away, he sees the beginnings of tears in his brother's eyes, hot and ready to well and break. He drops the stake he's holding, something in his chest twisting and stretching, images of Mikael he'd rather not see flashing before his eyes.

He leaves Klaus in the care of Rebekah, but it still doesn't drown out the screaming.

.

.

Klaus is weak, but still so _petulant_ , still jerks away when Rebekah unchains him and says It's for your own good, you know. To which Klaus, with blood wetting his chin, had responded with, "I'd rather be haunted by Silas."

As Rebekah lifts the vial up to the light she responds, "You just might, after I down this like tequila."

Elijah frowns at her. Rebekah sighs, places it in his hand with some hesitance. "Kidding," she says shortly.

At the look on his face, she scoffs, turning away. Her humanity (or lack thereof) is a price to pay for the return of their brothers, and she refuses to acknowledge it as a small one.

 

 

 

**ii.**

The town is too quiet; no Salvatores running around with questionable tasks in mind, and surprisingly in their absence, no Elenas wreaking havoc. He steps on pavements and walks through alleyways, and finds no hormonal teenage vampires skulking around either.

Silas however, is another story—still lurking, still trying to get his hands on the cure. Elijah finds him in a coffee shop one morning and buys him a banana-walnut muffin. The age-old witch in the form of Finn now (which Elijah finds rather unsettling, but forces himself not to think about it by sipping his coffee and focusing on the mole on Finn's neck that Silas had managed to get just right), sniffs at it dubiously.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Silas asks, closing Finn's mouth around the muffin.

Elijah sets down the dainty china. He doesn't have time for pleasantries, not today. "I have the cure. I'm willing to give it to you."

"In exchange for?" Silas chews on his muffin, crumbs dusting his lips. It's a fairly endearing sight, but Elijah does not smile.

"You're a powerful witch."

"And that amounts to nothing without the cure, or the Bennett witch." Silas swallows and smiles. "If you are willing to give me both I might be willing to give you what _you_ want."

Elijah rests his chin lightly on his right hand, left hand tracing the damask of the tablecloth. "I want my brothers back."

"Hello, brother," Silas grins. At the dark look on Elijah's face, the grin slides off his lips. "Fine. Finn and Kol. And Henrik too, I suppose. You will get them back. You will get all of them back. Mikael and Esther as well." Silas makes Finn's dimple disappear in mock-confusion. "A happy little family reunion, so I do not understand."

"Let me enlighten you." Elijah leans back and places a hand on the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and Silas' breath hitches in his throat ever so quietly when he notices the lump beneath the fabric. "I want my brothers back. Only them. I'll give you the cure, you'll be reunited with your lover—but only if you seal up the veil after you've gone through it."

"Crossing the veil isn't like tearing a hole in fabric and _stepping_ through it. It's a whole separate entity on its own." Silas picks up his muffin again. "What you're asking is entirely impossible, I'm afraid."

"Then so will your chances of ever being reunited with your long-dead love."

"You do realize," Silas says while leaning forward, "that I can reach out one hand and rip the cure right out of your chest, beating heart and all?"

"Do you think me so foolish as to bring the cure along with me?" Elijah reaches inside his breast pocket and pulls out the thing that had caught Silas' attention so. It's a pack of orange TicTacs, courtesy of Rebekah. "Would you like one? Magic or no, you still manage to capture my brother's halitosis vividly."

Silas glowers. This time Elijah does crack a smile, because he looks so much like the Finn he remembers then.

.

.

When Elijah returns, the house feels considerably warmer, the light shafting through the floor-to-ceiling windows and bursting through the silky white draperies much brighter.

"Nik left for a bit; don't know where he went," Rebekah says in lieu of a greeting when he finds her in the garden, hair adorned with those flower crowns girls her age (or girls she was pretending to share an age with) like, feet bare and buried in the green grass. Despite blooming like a spring rose, she still has the white oak dagger clenched tightly in her hands.

He says nothing about that, and Rebekah doesn't notice him looking because she's wrapped up in her own monologue. She lifts an ankle, shakes some leaves off of it. "To lick his wounds, no doubt. Took Caroline with him, or so I heard."

That would explain the absence—the teeny boppers had all gone on some search party. Elijah contemplates joining his sister (perhaps bring a stool with him first; grass stains in Armani cost a fortune to get out), but thinks better of it and goes back inside.

The sky burns blue, and in such glorious weather even Rebekah can't afford to look sad.

.

.

Silas appears in the armchair in the corner of Elijah's study, drumming his fingers together. He takes the form of Kol, but this time Elijah merely hums his assent. (He'd had the room decorated with Kol in mind anyway, a section of the room dedicated solely to his brother's fascination with old age biblical texts.)

"Don't you want to know what Finn and I are up to on the other side?"

The Original places a bookmark in the grimoire he'd been perusing. "I'm sure you're having a _hell_ of a time." He tries not to look gleeful as Silas scowls. Petulant child.

"Your jokes are terrible. I suppose you'd want to know how it goes."

Elijah shrugs. After poking around his bookshelf for a while, Silas says, resignation heavy in his voice, that such a spell would require great magic. But Elijah had been expecting that, hadn't he? Oh, and what a spell it was. And as it were with great magic, comes great sacrifice.

"Blood, I'm assuming?" Elijah says, sitting at the edge of his Rosewood desk. Nothing that would shock Silas, surely. The age-old witch had done everything short of bathing in a river of blood—but even that remained questionable.

"Not much." He's perplexed. Elijah asks why.

"All in due time." Silas says gravely. It's an odd look on Kol. Elijah finds that he misses the mirth and laughter Kol always seemed to carry with him.

Silas looks up from his dancing fingers to find Elijah's eyes. "Family above all. Those are your words, I believe."

Elijah meets his gaze levelly. "Yes."

"So you'd be willing to do anything for them."

He thinks of Klaus, with tears masked as sweat running down his face. "Always and forever."

And so it goes.

 

 

 

**iii.**

The sun rises just as the plane dips ever so slightly, and Caroline's face is illuminated with whispers of golden rays. Her eyelashes flutter against the light and her head shifts against the rest, but never into Klaus' waiting shoulder.

Not that he'd expected her to, but after the week he'd had it would have been more than welcome.

Klaus runs a hand down his face and gestures for more wine; the air hostess is more than happy to oblige. The fabric of her sleeve brushes against his as she's pouring, and she nods her head to Caroline. "Her first time flying?"

Klaus turns and sees the fraction of Caroline's fingers peeking out from under the blanket; feels something rising in his chest at the way Caroline grips her arm rest so tightly despite being sound asleep. Her other hand is draped loosely around the blanket covering her knees, which are drawn to her chest. Klaus never once doubts that she's uncomfortable in the heated leather seats, just as he doesn't doubt that this is her first time flying in a private jet, or first time flying period.

"She'll be fine," he says and leans back in his seat, raising his glass expectantly. On cue, the air hostess retrieves a blade from her pocket and slashes her wrist, and her blood drips down into his glass "Thank you, Maria," Klaus says after an amount he deems satisfactory. She responds in a rather faint voice and leaves, drawing the curtains after her.

"You are disgusting."

"Caroline," Klaus says jubilantly, propping his feet up. "You're awake, fantastic. Sleep well?"

Caroline stretches as much as she can, paying no mind to the way his eyes track the length of her neck. "Considering the fact that I was kidnapped the night of my graduation and spent the last few hours _handcuffed_ to my chair, pretty good."

"You came willingly," Klaus points out.

Caroline pulls off the blanket covering her arm, and tugs hard on the chain. "Does this look willing to you?"

Klaus switches seats so he's opposite her, inviting her to rest her feet on his knees. She just draws her knees closer to her chest. Sighing, he studies her. "You don't look as angry as I thought you would."

"I've had some hours to ruminate," says Caroline cattily, and looks out the window, takes in the sunrise. Her face is a golden glow, and she looks a vision with her rumpled hair and wrapped in a hand-loomed cashmere blanket that Klaus has to catch his breath—until she opens her mouth, and the moment is ruined. "What's taking so long, anyway? And did you bring me here to play out some twisted kink you have or something?"

"Sorry love, safety precautions." He tips his head back for a sip of his drink. Caroline tries not to stare. At this, Klaus holds his drink out to her, and at first she glares at him—before deflating and nods, _give it here_.

Klaus raises his eyebrows.

Caroline pushes out a sharp breath through her nose and intones, "May I have some, _please_."

Klaus knows Caroline is the sort of girl who knows what a shit-eating grin looks like, and, Klaus apologizes, truly he does, but there's one on his face his face as he leans forward and tilts his glass to her lips, and she catches his wrist to steady herself as she drinks deep. After she's had her fill, she turns her eyes on him. Her top lip is stained dark red, but Klaus doesn't bother pointing it out (he rather enjoys the colour on her).

"What do you mean safety precaution?"

"For my benefit, when I tell you why our flight is eight hours instead of two." Klaus swirls the blood in his glass, his mouth a straight line. Here we go. "Change of plans, we're not going to New Orleans."

"What?" Caroline asks sharply.

"I'm on the run, Caroline. When on the run, one must refrain from doing predictable things," Klaus says, slowly and carefully, eyebrows bobbing on each word he stressed.

Caroline's eyes widen as her breathing quickens just the slightest. "So you did kidnap me."

Klaus' face scrunches up as he mulls this over. "More or less, yeah. Don't worry though—left a note for your little friends. I suspect they're looking for you somewhere in New York."

Caroline flicks the glass of Merlot and blood right in his face.

Looking back, he supposed he deserved that.

.

.

They land in Heathrow, and Klaus finds he has to handle their luggage by himself because uncooperative Caroline keeps glaring at people bundled up in coats and mufflers and animal-faced beanies.

She's dressed for warmer weather, for swamp air frizzing in her hair, for tongues stained red from cherry popsicles. For lounging in hammocks with ice-cold Cokes, sweat just starting to drip onto her bare stomach; for licking her arms clean after eating half a watermelon all by herself.

Klaus realizes he's been staring a beat longer than he should be, and goes to relinquish his coat to drape around her shoulders. It's not for the benefit of the cold, but mostly to keep up appearances – and mostly to abate the pointed glares of the elderly woman standing next to him.

Caroline doesn't shy away when he stands close enough to brush his fingers down her bare arms as he's dressing her in his coat, but doesn't look at him either. With his jaw set, he steps away. I brought you here, he wants to tell her. Paris, Rome, Tokyo, he hadn't been lying – she can have it all. This is just a short detour, he wants to tell her, but she doesn't look particularly interested in having a conversation right about now.

He offers to show her around, but she scoffs and turns her back on him.

He has to stow his hands in his pockets to stop him from grabbing the nearest person by the throat. He could see it all—the choking, the tears collecting in the corners of their eyes when their airway gets blocked bit by frightening bit, the grasping, the way her cheeks colour and her eyes flash when she realizes what he's perfectly fine with doing, the people staring be damned – the way his teeth gnash together, _Smile_ , Caroline, or so help me I will _rip_ —

"Sir?" His driver steps up then, hat tucked in the crook of his arm. He had the air of dutiful obedience about him, shoes polished so shiny it rivalled the airport's marble flooring. Henry was a good man, which is probably why Klaus hadn't eaten him yet. "I trust you had a pleasant flight?"

Klaus pulls his hands out of his pockets slowly. Flexes his hands. "Pleasant enough."

 

 

**iv.**

"Should we book a flight to Cornwall, or should we drive?"

Caroline stares out the window, steadily ignoring him.

It's begun to rain. Her forehead rests ever so lightly on the glass, and she looks like she'd rather be outside, tasting the raindrops on her tongue. He wonders how that would look, if her hair would change colour from gold to wheat, if it would still feel as silky if he runs his hands through them. Wonders if she would shiver in the rain, still wrapped in his coat.

But for now—

"Caroline," he prompts.

"Are you actually being honest about our next destination now?" Caroline says to the window. "Really Klaus, I'm honoured."

Klaus glowers. Things had been going so well last night. Graduation, saving her and her gang of misfits. The _mini fridge._ "I couldn't exactly leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind for Elijah to find, can I?"

After all, his brother is nothing but a one-track man he doesn't add. The slightest whiff and he'd be off like a Mastiff unchained.

"He's resourceful," Caroline says, sounding hopeful. "He'll find me – us – either way."

"Perhaps," Klaus says, "but don't count on it. One time, I went five hundred years without once crossing his path."

What was it he'd said? Don't come back – don't you _dare_ show your face here until you've found Katerina – no, don't give me that look. How unbecoming.

And Elijah had _fled_ , without a glance back. He still thinks about it, sometimes. Becoming a ghost in your own home, waiting for him to come back, years into decades into centuries of betrayal carved into the mortar.

It had been a pleasure to watch the place burn.

It had gone up in a swirling pall of smoke, rolls of grey and black engulfing the night. Too late, brother - you can come home, but there will be no home for you to come back to.

The sound of denim moving against leather as Caroline moves away from the window shakes him out of his reverie. Her hands return to her spoon, stirring her now-cold soup in its bowl. She's tired, he knows. She'd slept on the plane, but before that had spent hours and hours and hours staring out the window, looking very small.

The rain falls harder, and Klaus almost misses when Caroline asks, "How are you so sure that it wasn't Elijah's intention all along?"

"Of course it wasn't," Klaus replies, but it sounds harsh in his ears – too quick, too defensive. " _He'd_ betrayed me; he was desperate to get back in my good graces—"

But Caroline just shrugs. "I don't know about you, but it sounds like he got a much-needed five-century vacation. From you."

Very carefully, Klaus sets down his fork and knife. The stainless steel doesn't even make a sound when it meets varnished mahogany. "If I'd known you were going to be this much trouble, I would have just stopped at the mini fridge."

"If I'd known kidnapping and veiled threats was part of your grand scheme to show me the world," Caroline says just as placidly, "I would have just searched for bus tickets on Groupon."

Klaus knows what she's doing, this – this _irritating_ insistence on being difficult. She wants to set him off, wants to see him bare his teeth and snap necks like twigs, but that had always been Damon's style, hadn't it? He much prefers going at them with his teeth. She ought to know by now.

He takes a breath, not deep enough to soothe, but enough to calm the temper rising in him. He asks, again, "Cornwall. Flight or drive."

Caroline pushes her clam chowder away. "We just got off a plane. I want to see the sights."

It's a six hour drive, eight if there's traffic. He can already imagine the mundane small talk and her knees pointed away from him.

Remind him again how he thought bringing her along while he is on the run was such a good idea?

He gestures for the bill, and when they're waiting for Henry to bring the car around, he holds his coat over her to keep her out of the rain. She glances at him from under her lashes, and do you really need to look so surprised, darling? It must have shown in his own eyes, because she sends him a smile. A small one, but it's enough for him to make sure she remains dry the whole time they walk towards the car.

Her smile grows bigger with something almost like wonder, when he pulls out some notes that – lo behold – _aren't_ green but in fact came in many colours to tip Henry.

And this, he remembers, this is why.

.

.

Once the luggage is safely in the car, and once Henry's procured an umbrella for Caroline, Klaus gives Henry the day off. The poor man looks confused, unsure of what to do now that he doesn't have to wait at the beck and call of a moody man and his indifferent companion, no doubt. "Are you quite sure, sir?"

"Henry," Klaus says, very nearly exasperated, "you have been driving me around for years. When have I ever had to repeat myself?"

"Never." Henry grins at him, at them, and puts his hands behind his back. Klaus knows what he's thinking and narrows his eyes; you drive me, not dissect my personal life.

Henry clears his throat and gives an awkward sort of salute, three fingers instead of two. "Have a nice stay, sir. And you, miss. It'll take a while to adjust to the weather – even Cornwall gets the chills."

"I have a coat," Caroline says, and waves her hand. His coat is big enough that its sleeves flap around her fingertips. "I'm good."

"Good," Klaus says. "Just one last thing—" and then he has Henry by the arm and looking directly into his eyes, "You woke up early today to come pick me up, but I never showed up. You waited, an hour, two hours, before finally deciding to go home. You left the car at my townhouse and decided to walk the rest of the way home."

Henry nods, rather dazedly, and walks away. His suit darkens in the rain and he doesn't even glance back.

Caroline looks appalled. "Dude, what the _hell_? You gave him the day off and then made him walk home? In the _rain_?"

"With any luck, he'll catch pneumonia and will be too sick to be interrogated," Klaus hums, sliding into his seat. He straightens the seat, checks the rear-view mirror – it's been a while since he's driven on this side of the road.

Caroline's still standing in the rain.

He sighs. "Aren't you coming, love?"

Caroline tilts her umbrella back, just a little. Her eyebrows are furrowed. "Where are we going? I thought we were going see London? Take in the sights? I mean, yeah, you've probably been here like a bajillion times, but – the book says by train it's only two stops away to…"

"Caroline," Klaus says quietly.

"…and I wanted to see Big Ben, maybe go up the London's Eye thing if the line's not too long? And wear black! I mean, everyone here's so gloomy, I love it – like, hello guv'nah, are you well acquainted with colour?" She's gushing now, spouting things she must have only seen in movies, only read about in books. He wants to pull her into the car, gently now, and tell her that it's called the London Eye, and _No, love_ , he wants to tell her, no one actually talks like that.

He wants to show her around, he really does. He wants to watch the way she looks when the street lamps light up as they walk along the river, watch her take it all in, but this is Elijah's territory. This is where Rebekah buys her shoes, ridiculous amounts of them. Anyone, from the cobblers to the brisk-walking pedestrians, the men in sweeping coats and children in sensible loafers, the shopkeepers peering from behind their displays – anyone could easily ring Rebekah up, anyone could still owe Elijah a favour.

His hands twist around the steering wheel. "Get in the car, Caroline," he says, none too gently.

"I'm not going," she announces. "I've read all those Enid Blyton books. Cornwall sounds boring."

Klaus gets out of the car and slams the door behind him, not caring that the rain is now soaking through his shirt. "Mallory Towers was set in Cornish," he has to shout over the rain, "and that's besides the point. _Get_. In. The. Car."

Caroline lifts her chin, and her eyes flash. "Or what, you'll make me?"

The wind shifts and a car whizzes by, and great, absolutely fantastic, now they're both drenched with puddle water. He leans close, so close their noses almost touch, and just because they're so close he can count her every individual eyelash, doesn't mean he's above yelling. "Do you really think now's the time to test me?"

Caroline lowers her umbrella useless at her side. "Fine."

"Fine!" she says again, marches to the car and curls up in her seat. He's about to shut the door for her, but she grasps the handle and slams it closed herself.

The afternoon's started to curl in on itself, the sky shifting from a yellowish gray to murky purple as he drives down the road, his sleeves dripping into the leather.

They see Henry, huddled against the wind, shuffling inch by sodden inch down the pavement.

"Breadcrumbs," Klaus reminds her, but Caroline just shifts in her seat, her knees pointed away from him.

.

.

They stop for gas some two hours down the road. It's still raining, but you can't see the rainfall through the dark of the night. The only sign of it is the incessant pitter patter, water drumming down on metal, splashing across windshields.

"You never really told me why you're on the run," Caroline says. She's examining the way he pumps gas, he's pretending he can't feel his gaze on her. He could look over his shoulder and it would be so easy to call her out on it, _like what you see, love?_ – but he's not Kol.

He considers lying, but the day has been long and they're in for an even longer night, and she has keen senses – she'd pick up on his lie the same way she'd picked him apart the night of the ball. So he tells her: "They're not happy that I daggered Elijah."

"Not happy? Is that code for they threw a hissy fit?" Caroline tilts her head. "Or did you?"

Klaus pulls the nozzle out of the tank, taps it a few times. He affects an indifferent expression. Bored, Klaus. You are bored. "There were no _hissy fits_ throws, as you so eloquently put it." Well, there were, if you counted him swearing their demise as he hung from his ankles. "Elijah wanted the cure for Rebekah."

"I thought you wanted it too?"

"No," Klaus says, sliding back into his seat. "I wanted it as leverage. Against Silas."

Caroline raises an eyebrow. "So why didn't you… leverage-ize?"

"That's not a word," he tells her absently as they make their way down the freeway, "and I was waiting for the right moment to strike. One does not survive a thousand years by simply going at it by the nose."

"No, one survives a thousand years by being an indestructible hybrid Original," Caroline says, and it almost sounds like a song. "And you milk it for all it's worth."

She stretches her legs out and kicks off her ankle boots. She has little socks on, purple, with tiny rainbows all over them. " _And_ I know for a fact," she adds, wriggling her toes, "the only reason you let Henry live is because it'd be way too suspicious if he suddenly turned up dead."

Collateral damage is messy, but necessary. What is one life, a mere human's, compared to his? Henry wakes up, probably puts the kettle on, reads a bit of news before pulling his gloves on and going to work – come back, repeat. The small detail that Henry had been loyal to him for years was just that – mere detail. What other business did Henry have other than being a _good_ man? Yes, Klaus knows gratitude, but he also knows that one does not survive a thousand years by being merciful.

If it weren't for Elijah, if it _weren't_ for Elijah – he would have held Henry by the throat, lifted him right off his feet, snatched the life from his eyes. A quick death, no need for teeth. Henry had, after all, been loyal.

 _O Sustainer of the Universe_ , Finn had been so fond of mocking, What righteous deed have you done today, brother? What poor soul did you decide was unfit for living today? And Rebekah had tried _so hard_ to shut him up, Shush Finn, you shouldn't say such things – you know how Nik gets –

Finn would find out shortly after that, just how he gets. Nine hundred years in a coffin had not stilled his tongue, and he still gallivanted around town, throwing down his words like spitting on the ground before him.

"You have the Midas touch, Niklaus," Finn had said gravely, in his mournful tongue. "Everything you touch turns to gold, but it's just an illusion of grandeur, masking the serpent that lies beneath. There is no joy to it, and I am not interested in being wrapped up in your sins. You will die alone and starving."

He hadn't been too sad to see Finn go, and he didn't think Rebekah cared that much either, but he must have been horribly wrong, seeing as she would sacrifice her own chance of humanity to get him back. Wasn't she the one who clung to him for years, oh sour old _Finn_ , he's such a _bore_ , come play with me, Nik, come play.

Family is a dying notion. He'd known it the day Kol had died, the way Elijah hadn't even come back. There was no body to be buried, so what was the point of it all? He's a stain on the tiled floor, he remembers telling Elijah's voicemail. Finn had been a cracked, ugly thing, burnt to a crisp, but whole nonetheless. If you tried touching Kol, Klaus says into radio silence, his face would rub off like ash in the palm of your hands.

Is it guilt then, lecherous thing that it is, that makes Elijah so adamant on getting them back? On betraying him and striking up a totally new deal with Silas? It must have been Rebekah who'd talked him into it; she'd been strangely silent these past few weeks, keeping to herself, and he'd _stupidly_ assumed it was because she was still sulking about the cure.

There's something bigger brewing in the distance, thunderclouds rolling in he knows. They'd made a bargain with a new kind of devil, and the cure would just be the beginning of it all, wouldn't it? And like _hell_ is he going to stick around waiting for lightning to strike.

The rain is still falling, and Caroline is still looking at him. Why doesn't she ever look scared?

"This is why I brought you along," Klaus says at last. "For the commentary."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fear that the charter magic mentioned here is a bastardization of the magic Garth Nix used in his Abhorsen series. While they share the same name and some of the traits, they're not entirely the same (if at all).
> 
> Also, I only half-watched season four, so I might get some facts wrong re: the cure, but since this is AU after the prom episode, I have decided: fuck canon, let's get on with the fic.
> 
> Sorry for the wait. Here's a long chapter to make up for it.

**i'm at home with a ghost (who got left in the cold)**

**2\. the parallel universe perhaps could be the perfect scene**

 

 

**v.**

Klaus lives by the sea.

There's a lemon tree growing in the garden, and from it the air smells fragrant, fresh. Pure. Beyond the tree, the vast ocean yawns along with the dawn, a blue mirage in the distance. It's quiet and dreamy here, and cold. She knows the chill of the morning, welcomes it with an extended hand, but she can't feel it. The frozen leaves don't shiver when the breeze picks up. The still of the morning determinedly untouched.

Caroline turns to look up at his little sun-bleached house, held up in its rickety glory by witchcraft, it must be. It looks as if it would shiver when the breeze picks up. But it doesn't, no, not even when balanced precariously on this cliffside: not when its very foundations thrum with magic. It's the only possible explanation for it still standing. The weathered shingles and the faded walls determinedly untouched.

Everywhere else is sand and dark, dark evergreen. Nothing else. She peeks beyond the lemon tree and stares, spellbound by the sea.

She imagines the sun breaking through the blue-grey haze of the horizon, glimmering over the crashing, turning stretch of water, and thinks: Tyler would have liked it here.

If he'd just come  _home,_  she thinks.

But she'd called him, she'd called him so many times, different arguments each time that soon turned to variations of the same old plead, come home and  _be_  with me. But Tyler had a pack to help, hadn't he? Tyler had a home away from home, he says, and she she'd tried to ignore how weary he'd sounded.

You're too young to be so tired, she'd wanted to say.

Come home, you don't need to be fixing other people, she'd wanted to say.

You're barely healed yourself, she'd wanted to say.

There's silence on both ends. Caroline picks at her sweater, the one Bonnie had knitted her so long ago, the one Elena had helped adorn with little bells and sparkly beads. The one that fits a little snug around her hips now, but still held her together even when she came undone, right then and there, the only sound around the inhale and exhale of his slow breathing.

"I have purpose here," Tyler said finally.

Okay, she says.

"I get it," she says. Quiet, hoarse.

She didn't get it.

Like, don't get her wrong – she'd tried to understand. But Tyler, Tyler was  _free_ , didn't that amount to anything? Klaus isn't after you anymore, but Tyler had gone so silent he might as well have hung up. But it's not he who hung up this time, but her. She gets it.

 

 

"Why are you packing?"

He looks comfortable, lounged on her bed. Picking through her books, running his fingers through her shimmery tops, her sheer blouses. His tie is loose around his collar, his jacket discarded on her swivel chair: it shouldn't make her want to push him back against her pillows, pin him down with her thighs crushing his hips and her elbow pushed to his throat, and demand he not look so at home with her.

It's a thought – a dangerous one, a guilt-churning one – but a thought nonetheless, and it would rip that  _look_  right off his face. She knows this. She doesn't know how, but she just does. She feels a stirring low in her stomach at the thought of having him by the throat.

He looks up from her tattered copy of Animal Farm right then, a smile freezing that one tiny dimple in his cheek, and she flushes right to the roots of her hair. He couldn't know. She sneaks a glance at him. Could he?

His smile widens. She turns away hastily, pulling a dress off a hanger. "I'm… going on an adventure," she decides. Her hands keep grabbing at her clothes, throwing them into an ever-growing pile on her bed, some draping over him. Good. Now she won't have to see his face.

"With Tyler?" he asks. So casual, so cool. Her hands slip and a hanger falls with a clatter and – yeah, that's not casual.

"No." She tries to affect the same nonchalance, but she's so tired. Her hands come up to massage her temples, to push her hair away as her eyes close. "He's busy with other things."

If Klaus's interest wasn't piqued before, it is now. He props himself up on his elbow and raises an eyebrow. "Really now? Well, I just wasted a graduation gift, wouldn't you say?"

"Shut up, Klaus," she says quietly, and walks over to her bed. Klaus is sprawled before her, half-turned as he watches her expression, but she gives him none. Not bothering to brush him aside, she crawls in and settles down next to him. Eyes on the ceiling, that's it – don't even look at him.

They're lying close together. Beside her, he has gone very still.

She turns on her side so she's facing him; they're so close their noses almost touch. It would be easy to close the distance and just kiss him, and – oh God, part of her does want to, but the other more logical part of her reasons that it's just rejection from certain jerkface heart-breaking hybrids that's making her…  _feel_  things, making her want to reach out and brush the curls away from Klaus's forehead, making her knees knock together in the effort of not to tangling her legs through his.

His eyes flick down to her lips for the nano-est of seconds, but it's all it takes – she swallows. And suddenly it's the football field all over again, that tiny hook of hesitation holding him back before he lets out a cool breath across her cheeks, as if preparing them for the burn of his lips.

It's the burn that she remembers, and it's the burn that makes her look away. Klaus stays where he is.

"If it were you graduating," she begins slowly, and Klaus smirks at that. "Come on, play along – if it were you graduating, what would you want?"

He frowns like he's seriously considering her question, and that's one thing she appreciates about him. She presses her cheek into her pillow, waiting for his answer.

"I think I'd go on an adventure." His eyes bore into hers as he smiles, something wicked in it. "With the one person I care about. We'd go places, drink in the sights, drink in the humans. Their bones so very brittle in our hands; we'd listen to them scream—"

"K- _laus_ ," Caroline whines, whacking his shoulder. "Don't ruin it."

"Alright, alright. I'd show her—"

"That one person."

"That  _one_  person," he concedes with a tiny eyeroll. "I'd show that one person a good time. All the food, all the wine, the art, the decadence – it would be all for us."

"And at the end of it?" she whispers.

Klaus leans in, eyes closing, his nose grazing the column of her neck. He breathes her in and – her head tilts back to allow him better access, like she isn't in control of her own body or something. But then he stops and pulls back, leaving her a little breathless: "Who says it has to end?"

Caroline finds her voice. "Yeah, but all good things—"

Klaus laughs. His laugh rumbles right through her, holds her down. "It wouldn't be just  _good_ , sweetheart."

"Then what would it be?"

He rolls off the bed, a lazy, sleepy lion; lands on his feet with the grace as such. He doesn't smile as much as he bares his teeth. "Let me show you."

 

 

 

**vi.**

The sea murmurs and the sun wavers in the distance as though unsure of the time, hiding just behind the edge of the world. The waves break first. The sun waits.

A lemon drops from its branch and Caroline flashes forward to catch it without thinking. Her vampire senses getting the better of her. She brings the fruit to her nose and breathes in deep; it fills her up with something light and pure. Her eyes close, and when she opens them again she's greeted by the blinding sun. She staggers back, eyes screwed shut, the lemon squelching in her tight grip.

"What the  _hell_?"

Klaus sits on one of the benches lining the side of his house, sketching. He's already changed, his hair curls cleanly behind his ears. There's a flush to his skin when he smiles at her, and she narrows her eyes; she's come to know that he only ever looks this invigorated when he's just fed. She would remark on it, but her limbs feel stiff and her bones crack when she stretches. "What did you do to me?" she growls. "Why is the sun suddenly out? What did you  _do_ to me, Mikaelson?"

"The lemons are spelled," he replies, and – the bastard – he smiles even wider. "The fumes paralyze you for a good few hours."

"And you didn't think to freaking  _warn_ me?" Caroline yelps, pitching the lemon at him, but he ducks just in time. For good measure, she flashes to the other side of the garden, far away from both the tree  _and_ Klaus. He just sits there, chuckling.

"I did tell you not to wander off," he says pointedly. His dimples show when he smiles, the hundredth time she's noticed. He's enjoying this way too much and it irks her. His stupid pencil makes scratching noises where they travel along his tiny sketchbook: he acknowledges her glare with a grand showcase of flipping it shut and slipping it into his shirt pocket; jumps to his feet and brushes off his hands. "Right. Our bags have been sorted and breakfast is in order. Or would you like a tour first?"

But she's already stomped off, slamming the splintered garden door behind her.

Stupid old as balls hybrid Originals. Stuffing her into a plane, promising her the world – Paris! Rome! Tokyo! – and here they are in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods and water and—she stops to inspect the stark white railing of the porch steps—a house made of bones. A house so white, it must be made of bones.

Her hands feel sticky where the lemon juice dripped, and she clenches it into a fist that she wishes she could shove up his nose. Paralyze him. That's a gratifying thought.

Instead, she hastily wipes it clean against her jeans. Just to be safe.

Spelled. Klaus had this garden spelled.

From the way he'd warned her to stay close as he'd unloaded their bags, it isn't limited to just the garden.

So she had been right about the house, yay,  _score one for Caroline_ , she thinks dryly and marches on, even as Klaus lets out a laughing protest behind her. She should have known, should have seen it coming—lemon trees in Britain for God's sake. She scrubs a hand down her face, pausing only a moment to register her exhaustion before bounding up the stairs. The porch looks weather-beaten and – God, how long has it been since he was last here? There's a dusty looking windchime hung above the arch of the doorway, and she's so busy looking at it and determinedly ignoring Klaus's call of, "Careful, love!"—

—that her foot sinks through a broken step and she crashes into the railing, hands flailing, an exposed nail ripping through the flesh of her arm. She hisses as she catches herself, blood seeping through the sleeve of Klaus's jacket. Klaus is by her side in an instant, turning her arm in his hands, inspecting the gash.

She snatches her arm away and holds it bleeding to her chest. "Upkeep much?"

Finally his glossy veneer melts away, giving way to a scowl. "If I'm here all the time it would defeat the very purpose of this place, wouldn't it?"

"Whatever," she snaps, rubbing her skin where it stings. She's still cradling her arm to her chest, and it's staining her shirt. In fact, her arm is still bleeding profusely, not healing. She blinks down at all the blood, suddenly feeling very, very, cold, but that's not possible—

"Klaus," she says faintly, before falling sideways. Her vision blacks out just as she feels his arms circling her, a ragged whisper in her ear that she can't make out.

 

 

She wakes up with gooseflesh prickling her skin, sweat cooling on her forehead. Klaus is peering down at her from where he sits by her side.

"And I should warn you," he begins conversationally, but there's a slight tremor in his voice that she would have missed had her entire body not been focused on just his voice as it restarts itself. "The nails…"

"Laced with werewolf venom?" Caroline attempts a weak laugh, and Klaus smiles a fleeting one. He's still watching her closely. "Quite the welcoming committee, Klaus."

"This wasn't how I imagined bringing you here," he admits ruefully, fingers tracing the healing wound on her arm.

"Ah, so you imagined." She sits up against the pillows and catches sight of herself in the vanity. Her skin is white, dark bruises under her eyes that are just starting to fade. She licks her parched lips. "Who else got the short end of the stick?"

"Nobody knows of this place, not even my siblings." He pauses. "Especially not my siblings. And it's worth noting that no one alive has seen this place. No one but me."

And you, his blue eyes tell her.

No one but you.

She swallows. It sounds so petty that she laughs again, a harsh rasp that frees up her throat. The worry in Klaus's forehead unknots, and there's a different kind of burn on her arm now, where his hand lies flat against her skin. She can feel his every scar on his fingers, remnants of wars torn and kingdoms burnt, she thinks.

Klaus is heavy and the bed dips where he sits. She straightens her back against the plush pillows; she'd been leaning into him, almost. "What about the witches who helped you spell this place?"

He regards her carefully. "Disposed of," he says, his lips curling the slightest bit.

The smile slides off her face. No one alive he'd said, hadn't he?

The air shifts around them and suddenly it's thick and uncomfortable, his hand heavy on her arm. The bed is luxurious, although wide and unfamiliar. But the sheets are soft and comfortable, and her fingers touch smooth Egyptian silk (Steven had brought her to Frette once and he'd taught her all the difference from generic sheets it bore in the world). Sunlight filters through the drapes and everything, from the furniture to the bedposts to the walls, looks bleached by age, bleached by the sun.

"Is this your room?" She can hear the waves crashing endlessly.

"Yeah," Klaus replies, moving his hand away. She flexes her arm in response; he ducks his head. And she has to marvel at this, how the thousand year old vampire who orders a coven of witches to build a house for him by the sea and then kills them, can be so goddamn…  _bashful_  about this single question.

No, Caroline. Do not even go there. Do not even try to  _feel_ —her chastise is cut short by the creak of the bed: Klaus had stood up and strode across the room to look out the window. The salt in the air rushes into the room as he pushes it open, the timber frame groaning under his ministrations. She wonders if it's the groans of the dead witches from so long ago. If it's their bones that keep this little house alive.

"It's not much," Klaus says, his back to her. "But I've never wanted for anything here."

He sounds so faraway she kind of wants to believe him.

 

 

They eat dinner in the kitchen. His study is right down the hall, the door ajar. She can see books lining the walls and stacked by the door. She'd poked her head in as they were passing by and it smelled musty: the books looked so old her fingers would probably come away sticky with dust and grime should she touch them (or even  _want_  to, to be quite honest).

Klaus keeps glancing at them every so often, but he's too wrapped up in courtesy to leave her eating alone. Her wine had been boiled with cloves and star anise and cinnamon and other things that made it smell insanely good, but that's not why she finds her mouth watering—Klaus is holding his wrist up to her, bent back so his veins strain against his skin. Her teeth hum.

"It was a strong dose of venom. Spelled, of course," he tells her. At her questioning glance, he explains, "I didn't want to take any chances with this house. The second wave should hit in a few minutes."

"Okay," she says, her stomach already starting to turn. He's watching her intently – she knows she must still look pale, sickly. She wraps her fingers around his wrist. "So I just…?"

"This isn't your first time, love."

 _Yeah_ ,  _well_ , she wants to argue, but the room is starting to sway, so she sinks her teeth into him instead. Just a little bit, that voice of reason protests feebly from the back of her mind – it always sounds like Bonnie, somehow. Just enough, the voice insists, but she finds herself drinking deeper, filling her mouth, wetting her teeth with his blood.

 _There's nothing quite like it, huh?_  And then it's Damon sauntering past now—something deep inside her growls—leaning his frame against a wall as Bonnie huffs. Blood, straight from the vein. Feel it slide down your throat, taste your tongue drowning in it. Hot, wet, red,  _gushing—_

Caroline chokes.

Klaus withdraws his hand, propping her chin up with his finger, his other hand rubbing her back. "Easy now, there'll be time enough for more. Later."

She parts her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. God, how must she look right now – but Klaus is chuckling. "No need to be embarrassed, Caroline. It happens. You lose yourself in it."

Caroline lifts a finger to the corner of her lips. It comes away red. Yeah, well.

 

 

**vii.**

There are windchimes in the living room too, and although all the windows are shut to keep the chill out they still ring a silvery tune, slow and hypnotic. She's sitting snug on the couch by the fireplace, wrapped up in blankets. She's feeling much better now, she'd told him exasperatedly, but he'd just draped another blanket over her legs. "Are they magic too?"

"They tell me if there's trouble about," Klaus says distractedly, flipping a page of a grimoire. He's sitting on the floor, back resting against her calves. There are sizeable stacks of books all around him, and he's gone through six of them already, always casting them aside with a disappointed grunt afterwards.

His eyes travel lines and lines of runes and symbols she can't decipher, and she wonders what it is he sees in that dusty yellowed page that makes him look so wary all the time.

"How can you tell?"

"I just can," he says shortly. The windchimes sway in the windless room, louder this time, clanging insistently against the muted crash of ocean waves. Klaus sets down the grimoire and is already on his feet, his shoulders a hard line. Caroline watches him with wide eyes. "What is it?"

Klaus doesn't answer. He's still as a wolf, his ear turned to the door, his hearing picking up things not even she can pick out in the slow dwindle of the evening. She strains her own ears and hears nothing but ocean waves.

" _Klaus_."

He turns to her. His pupils are blown, his eyes yellow. Just a touch feral. "Stay here," he snarls, and if it doesn't shake the house it certainly shakes  _her_ , and then he's off, front door swinging.

"Like hell I will," she shoots under her breath, already kicking off her blankets.

She stumbles down the hall after him, pulling on her shoes as she goes. She doesn't touch the railing as she bounds down the steps into the darkness outside. Klaus is nowhere to be seen, but the woods just beyond his house whisper something green and secret. They extend their branches to her as if beckoning her closer, yes child, the answer to which you seek is right here,  _come_.

It's a curious mix, pine and sea salt, but she crosses the road and wades through the thick bushes, hesitating only a second before pushing past the prickly branches. The woods hold her in a strange sort of stillness, a quiet so deafening that it seems almost tangible – she could wrap her fingers around it and choke if she wanted to.

Something rustles the leaves behind her.

"Klaus?" she asks, her voice two octaves too high. She keeps moving, ducking underneath branches, her shoes treading silently through exposed roots and decomposing leaves and forest rot. She hears breathing that is not hers – quick and shallow, as though stealing for air.

She ducks around a fallen tree, her dead heart pounding. Shut up, she wants to hiss. Shut up, you'll give me away.

A twig snaps.

She smells something warm, something human, but not quite.

 _Run_ , her shaking bones scream.

 _Stay,_ the woods whisper.

 _A little bit of both?_  Bonnie suggests while Damon nags, and she closes her eyes, zeroes in on the breathing and  _lunges_ , nails clawing and fangs bared, a growl hacked up from the back of her throat, an ache for blood rising up from her chest, masking all that putrid fear—

Her teeth sink into that something human, but her fingers – they find the not quite and they  _burn_. She scrambles back until her shoulder meets rough bark, her skin hissing, but she sees him then, the man running towards her with an axe swung behind him. The moonlight trickling through the canopy paints his bare chest alabaster, picks out the black tattoos protruding from his skin like a broken bridge.

"Hunter," she gasps, before ducking. The axe slices through the air and buries deep into tree, where her head had been a third of a second ago. A lock of her hair flutters to the pine-strewn ground, and she can still smell the metallic burn the swing of the axe had left in its wake.

"That would explain the bloodlust, wouldn't it?" he asks, yanking the axe out of the tree, but it falls to the ground with a heavy thud when Caroline throws her entire weight against his legs. He falls with a grunt, her elbow stabbing his gut, but the minute she tries to punch the heart right out of him her knuckles come away blistering. She bites out a cry and flinches away, and in that split moment of hesitation he brings his fist down to the soft spot high on her temple.

She blinks, a swirl of bursting stars, and then feels her kick uselessly as he picks her up and throws her back down. She coughs out a curse laced with blood. He brings his foot down but she dodges, once, twice, before kicking her feet under her and hurtles towards him. He's skilled, she realizes, but he's no hunter—he doesn't move with the fluid strength Jeremy or Connor Jordan did, didn't come armed with any nifty weapons like Inspector Gadget, Vampire Hunter Edition. He threw his punches gracelessly, he came at her with an  _axe_  for God's sake, she thinks as she matches him punch for punch, her vampire agility taking over her untrained body.

But her punches, they burn and they bleed: when she draws back her fist it's wet with blood that's not his. He's grinning, teeth red, and he's laughing, feet advancing. "Go ahead, take another swing. See if your dainty little fists can take it."

She snarls, but he's right. Her fingers are so blistered it's a wonder they're not collapsing in on themselves. Her eyes sting with tears not yet shed, a pain throbbing in her temple. She's tired. She's strong, but so is he, and she's  _tired_. She bares her teeth,  _Give it one last go, Forbes_  and flies, taking him by his jeans this time, using the heels of her boots to grind into his chest, his face, any part of him.

"Why—" her heel slams cross his face, "—can't—" her knee slams into his groin, "—I _freaking—"_ she stabs a branch through his muscled shoulder, "— _touch_ —"

He's on the ground now, bleeding and laughing, her on top of him, her hands wrapped round his neck, spreading blisters on her skin. Her vision fades in and out as her skin burns red; choking on the fumes his skin seems to be emanating—

"Kill me," he splutters, spraying her face with his blood. " _Do it_. I wonder what your friends back in Mystic Falls would think."

She stops then, breathing hard, but no, she has fallen for this one time too many. She grabs the discarded branch and slams it down into his gut, keeping him there. He lets out a scream and writhes, but tough luck, pal –  _you're not going anywhere_. "Talk," she demands in a wet rasp, sitting up with on his legs. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

"Katherine Pierce," he spits out, seeming to relish her confusion. "She sent me, your little friends have been looking for you—"

She cuts him off with a groan, because freakin' seriously, is there a list somewhere with no short supply of psychopaths Katherine Pierce knows? Is there anyone in the  _world_  Katherine Pierce doesn't know? It filled her with relief to know that at least her friends weren't sitting ducks back home, that they at least had the sense to be resourceful, to recruit Katherine, to reach out even without the Originals' help, but this guy, he keeps  _laughing_.

" _Shut up_ ," she snarls, not even caring when her knuckle splits open across his face when she punches him, but he doesn't even wince. In fact, all he seems to be doing is lap at the blood she'd left streaked on his fast, lap and suck and gurgle a laugh, so she punches him again, and again he drinks in her blood. She swings her other hand, draws it back and brings it down, drowns out his laughter, switches hands, shut up, swings it across his face, shut up,  _shut_ up, I will fucking  _kill_  you, shut up shut up  _shut up_ —

"Up you get, love."

She feels strong arms wrap around her and pull her up, even as her hands continued their arc through the air. "Let me  _go_ ," she hisses. The man on the ground still laughs even as he bleeds.

"Not a chance," Klaus says, holding her as she strains against him. His voice flows like honey and she is caught. Transfixed. "You're hysteric—no, don't give me that look, it's the Charter marks on his chest—it's making you feel this way."

"Marks?" Her fists slow, her kickings cease. "The Hunter's Mark?"

The man cackles. "Idiot!"

She stiffens; Klaus just runs soothing hands down her arms. She takes in a deep breath, locks her knees together. "You can let me go."

Klaus doesn't.

She turns her head, locks her eyes with his. "I'll stay. I promise."

There is a moment in between, where the forest doesn't weep and the man doesn't laugh, where her knees don't shake and his arms don't trap, where her eyes look into his, where he lets out a breath and she fills herself up with it. There is a moment where she looks into his eyes asking him to trust her, and he looks back, cradling this new knowledge of her in his arms, unsure of what to do with it.

Will he burn it? Wrap his hands around its neck and make it cry?

Caroline shuts her eyes and counts to ten.

And Klaus, he lets her go.

 

 

**viii.**

The sun glows orange in the distance, dragged there and made to stay by Klaus himself. Seawater licks at her ankles and sand wets her jeans, but she stays. Watches. Doesn't even flinch when Klaus peels yet another strip of skin off the man's chest with his bare hands, ridding the man of his charter mark bit by bit.

(Okay, maybe she does flinch. A little. Maybe the first time Klaus plunges his fingers into the man's flesh she turns her head away, maybe the first time she hears him stop laughing and start screaming she wishes she could cover her ears.)

She squares her shoulders and crosses her arms, her skin still tingling. "If Katherine sent you—if my  _friends_  sent you—why'd you try to kill me?"

The man just spits at her feet. Klaus's eyes narrow—he uses his nails this time, and had the man not been compelled to stand utterly  _still_  Caroline knows he would have dropped to his knees. She can see the whites of his sternum now.

"Charter mages," Klaus says easily as the man screams, like she'd just asked him what the time was or whatever. "They hunger for your blood. It's instilled into their every instinct. Dirty magic, if you will. Distant cousins of Travellers."

"Travellers?"

Hesitation on Klaus's part. Caroline narrows her eyes.

"A story for another day," Klaus decides. "Your Mystery Gang must badly want to know where you are, to send him. They are cruel, but resourceful."

And can withstand pain, Caroline thinks silently. They'd hung him by his ankles to drain him of vervain, and that had taken  _hours_ ; morning came before the last of it finally trickled out of him. Klaus had told her to go to bed, go rest, but she'd flat-out refused. How could she sleep when the person who'd tried to bury an axe in her head was in the next room?

After that there was the matter of removing the charter mark from his chest—the thing that keeps her from being able to touch him. "Not until the mark's gone."

"So how can you?" she'd asked in a hushed tone as they stood in this barren wasteland, sun-bleached sand stretching for miles, the tide not yet risen.

"I can't," Klaus had replied shortly. 

So he had set to work on that, inch by painful inch, until the water was now flooding around her knees. Every so often the man would let out a weak laugh but Klaus would just laugh along and splash some saltwater onto the raw flesh of his chest. Funny joke, this, he seemed to say.

"Why won't he stop laughing?" It was creeping her out.

The man's eyes dart. His long hair swings.

Klaus flicks a bit of skin into the water. "He's hungry."

She stands there, digesting this. Katherine had sent him, this vampire-eating freak of nature, to look for her. Her friends—Stefan, Matt, Bonnie, even Elena, as fucked up as her turned-off self might be—they had  _okayed_  this.

"Klaus," she says slowly. "What exactly are you not telling me? This isn't just you running away from your siblings."

The man finally stops laughing long enough to shoot her a sinister little smile. "Something's in the works, Caroline Forbes. Your friends are desperate—wouldn't you love to know why?"

"Be quiet," Klaus growls, stabbing his forefinger into (what was left of) the man's chest and dragging it straight down. The man sreams long and hoarse and bloody. "There. All gone. Do what you will with him, sweetheart."

"No," Caroline shakes her head. The waves crash against her thighs. "You've done enough." Her movements feel slow against the water, but she strides right up to the man. "Tell me what you know."

"Cut me loose," he challenges, tears and blood streaked down his face. He's staring at the water nervously. The gash in his chest bleeds into the rising tide, a red pool about him. "Let's talk about this on dry land."

"We're going to talk about this right here," Caroline hisses. "Why did my friends send  _you_?"

The man looks past her, right at Klaus. "Your siblings cut a deal with Father. You must know that by now."

Caroline whirls around. "Father? Who's he talking about? Is he talking about—" She pauses, taking in Klaus's stance: the hard lines of his shoulder, the clench in his jaw. Realization dawns on her. "Silas? But we knew that."

It's safe to touch the man now. Caroline grabs him by the jaw, forces him to look at her. "What kind of deal?"

"Let me go first."

"You're staying right  _here_." She still feels the burn of his fingers around her wrists. Klaus had told her she was lucky her hands hadn't been reduced to two bloody stumps. Water seeps into her shirt, washes against her waist. "We're not moving you until you tell me."

"Perhaps we should leave him here," Klaus says, but there's something in his voice, something that doesn't want her to know. She stays. She'd promised that much. "Love—"

"Shut up."She turns on Klaus, her eyes dripping murder. "I was  _not_  dragged all the way here to become animal fodder in yet another one of your twisted little schemes. I am  _not_  going to be left in the dark. This dude tried to kill me because of some kind of personal vendetta Elijah and Rebekah have against you and I  _refuse_  to let it be the way I kick it."

"Caroline—"

" _Shut up_."

They stand there, glaring at each other. He, furious at her for having the  _galls_  to silence him, her furious at him for not believing she's capable of it.

"If I'm going to be here, I'm going to be here as your partner. Your  _friend_ ," she stresses on the word and raises her eyebrows _, hey, remember that one time I stuck gardening shears in your back looking for a piece of stake that wasn't there?_

Klaus looks at her long and hard, pushes a gust of air through his nose and says, "Fine. I'll tell you everything back at the house."

He turns to leave.

Caroline stares at his retreating back to the man still compelled to stillness. "But—the guy—"

"Leave him."

"Klaus—"

"I said  _leave_  him," he yells, whirling around to face her again. He looks thirsty, he looks livid. He looks torn. "This is what I do, Caroline. I think I reserve a right to have  _some_  say in what to do with the man who tried to kill you."

"You can't  _do_  this to me!" The man thrashes where stands, but his hands remain clipped to his side. Even so, water splashes everywhere, soaking Caroline. "The tide is rising!"

"Perhaps you ought to learn how to swim." Klaus whistles a goodbye, hands folded behind him. He walks off in a haughty jaunt, water rippling behind him - doesn't look back once.

.

.

"The Charter," Klaus says, a grimoire spread out before them. Strange little circular marks on the old paper, soft between her fingers. "Blood magic. The same magic Silas and Qetsiyah drew from. It underpins everything that exists in this side of the world."

Caroline's eyes follow the trace of his finger across the page. "This side?"

"There's this side, and then there's the Other Side." His lips form a straight line. "It's something else altogether, or so I've gathered. The sigil that the man had marked into his skin—" He flips a few pages and nudges the grimoire towards her. She doesn't understand it, but the illustrations of something black and ghoulish jumping into the man's skin as he lay strapped to a stone table are telling enough – she shudders. "To disorient you. You can't touch him. Of course, it requires a token sacrifice. Not blood, as one might guess. Something even more vital. His sanity."

"Which explains all the laughing," Caroline says quietly.

"And the thirst for blood." Klaus pulls the book away. "You touch him, you bleed, you weaken. He drinks from you. You die."

"But how does Katherine know him? Why would Stefan  _let_ —"

"They didn't send him," Klaus says grimly.

"Then who?"

"I wonder who in Mystic Falls has the power to parade around pretending to be anybody they wished?"

Silas. Of course. Caroline slumps back against the couch, her hand pressed to her forehead. She's not quite sure how to feel. "Silas knows where we are."

"At this point we have to assume he does. If Rebekah and Elijah are working with him, it'll have something to do with me. It must."

And blood, he doesn't add. Her eyes roam to the etchings on the page, the circular runes, the splash of red. So much blood.

At this point, Klaus sounds like he's talking to himself more than her. He's sitting so still in his own chair that he almost seems part of it. It reminds her that they haven't moved from this spot for hours: when she stretches, her bones crack.

Expression, Charter, Travellers – only a few grimoires in and she already feels like the witches have vomited all over her brain. Imagine having to go through this every single day. Imagine being Bonnie, all that power bent and malleable in her hands, sacrifices left unsaid. How many times had her friend stood by quietly while her whole life fell apart? Even now…

Caroline buries her head in her hands, eyes shut tight. She's awash with a sudden homesickness, for Liz and her cold buttered noodles, for the warmth of her bed, for Bonnie's arms around her; for Stefan's steady reassurance of his chin propped on her head; for Matt and his doopy, crooked smile; for  _Tyler_ , Tyler and his eyes that had flecks of gold in them when the sun hits just right, Tyler who always kisses her with his eyes closed longer than they have to be. She even misses turned-off Elena, with her wicked tongue and cold eyes, but she misses more the Elena with her gentle grace and quiet strength. Damon, she thinks, even you too.

"Get some rest," she hears him say. She cracks one eye open to see him rest a hesitant hand on her head. She nuzzles against it, surprising the both of them. "We're leaving soon."

"But we just got here."

"We're  _leaving_ ," he says. His hand drops to his side. Discussion closed. He leaves the books where they are and sweeps out of the room, brows furrowed just the slightest. She's too tired to ask what he's keeping from her this time.

The windchimes trickle out their silver tune and she basks in the soft murmur of it, smelling the salt of the air, hearing the waves crash. They'd been filled with screaming earlier, the sound of water pushing in at you from all sides, of saltwater rushing into your windpipe, of your lungs burning for air and your blood pounding in your eyes. Of a drowning man dying alone.

She snuggles deeper into the mountain of blankets left behind from yesterday, the past two days' events seeping from her bones into the couch, her body melting against the broken-in cushions. Her eyelids feel heavier by the second. She doesn't hear drowning men now – nothing but ocean waves.

When she finally falls asleep, she dreams of long shadowed corridors, sharp corners, and running. Endless, endless running.

 

 

* * *

**ix.**

Silas takes the form of Alaric Saltzman as he sits across Rebekah in the kitchen, brewing a drink from herbs Elijah only vaguely knows the origins of. Elijah's eyes narrow when he pricks his finger with a knife that had been dipped in their blood, and shakes a drop of deep, dark red into the brew. It glows red for a moment before it bubbles, and all colour is lost.

Rebekah, with the memory of being overtaken by the history teacher still fresh in her mind, almost refuses to meet his eyes – but the hand that reaches out to accept the dull bronze goblet ( _How kitsch,_  Elijah thinks with a sniff) Silas offers does not shake.

"You will dream tonight." When asked what, Silas shakes his head, refusing to say anything else.

The drink is now a translucent green, but doesn't hold its shape like most liquids do. It floats and turns in on itself, something like mist, and when she sniffs at it she says she couldn't possibly fathom what it might do. Rebekah turns her head the slightest bit to look at Elijah, a hundred and one questions in the blue of her eyes, and as she raises the drink to her worry-bitten lips he almost wants to cry out, to knock the goblet from her hands.

"Go ahead," Silas says, and there's a dull burn in Alaric's eyes – almost like the mist of the drink.

Rebekah shrugs and drinks deep, some of the mist wafting about her face and settling in the gold of her hair. Silas passes him his own cup but he waves it away, eyes intent on his sister.

"How do you feel?" Elijah asks when the cup is empty. He tries not to sound too anxious.

Rebekah shrugs again. There is some semblance of Kol in the tilt of her head and the roll of her eyes. "This is so anticlimactic."

Silas shoots him a knowing look and Elijah feels some of the heaviness in his shoulders leave, and he picks up his cup. He drinks it before he can change his mind, and it goes down smooth. His gag reflex does not stir and he puts down the now-empty cup, looking mildly surprised.

Bored now, Rebekah examines her nails. "Can I go to bed now or what?"

 

 

After assuring him for the hundredth time that yes, she is fine, and  _no_ , she doesn't want another mug of warm B+ to wash down Silas' magic wish-wash, Elijah stands in her doorway and watches her slip into bed. Her hair falls in soft waves down the back of her nightgown.

He likes it when she wears white, a vision of purity, of flowers in her hair as she eludes him in the caves they played in as children; of innocence. With her back against fluffy pillows, Rebekah blinks at him through foggy eyes and says, "I think it's working."

Her covers aren't even halfway pulled up her legs when she drifts off into a wasteland of Silas' promised dreams. He studies her sleeping face; ready to shake her awake at the slightest whimper of her lips, but Rebekah makes no sound. He gently tugs the blankets over her sleeping form and tucks it under her chin, before clicking off the lights.

The night settles around him and makes no sound as he sits in his study, the silence broken by the occasional turn of the grimoire he is reading. He traces names out of the dust with his forefingers, tastes the words on his tongue.  _Qetsiyah_ , he reads aloud, letting her name seep into his tongue the way Rebekah sometimes fancied herself a wine tester. Her name stirs something in his mind, restless and yearning.

He's still thinking about her, this witch who has the fates of his brothers dangling from her fingertips, even as he turns out the lights and sinks into his pillows. The day's events leave him agitated and restless, but the drink Silas had made for him kept him from springing out the bed and pacing the room. His shoulders slacken, his eyelids grow heavy, and he is out like a light.

He hadn't slept for long when he feels the rustling of his bed clothes and a weight on his chest. He opens his eyes to find Rebekah, her chin propped on his chest, her eyes wide and glassy.

"Rebek—?"

"Did you dream?" she whispers.

Come to think of it—

"No," he says, lowering his voice to match hers. They are safe, they are in their home; Niklaus has gone and they have the daggers. And yet here he is, whispering. He's not sure why.

"I dreamt of him."

Elijah stares at her, that anticipation swelling in his chest again, but Rebekah, she's never been patient, always quick to assume he couldn't possibly understand – she takes in a breath and clutches him closer. " _Henrik_ ," she says, the name catching in her throat.

The silence seeps into the walls as Elijah waits for her to continue, his hands balled into fists under the covers. He's stunned, he's at a loss, he's  _envious_ —

"Did you?" Rebekah swallows, eyes bearing into his.

"No," he says tersely. He didn't dream. He hadn't slept long enough, or perhaps the brew wasn't strong enough, or perhaps Rebekah had woken him up before he could—perhaps, perhaps! Is this all the night is made of? He tries to stifle the disappointment, the unease, the doubt building in his chest when he feels his sister's soft hand touch his cheek, cool and comforting despite its trembling.

"I'll help you," Rebekah sounds breathless, something wet collecting in the corners of her eyes. She settles in his lap more comfortably and rests her fingers against his temples. His arms find purchase around the small of her back, partly to steady her and partly to hold her closer.

He knows how these things go. This is not the first time they've done this.

Rebekah closes her eyes, and so does he.

 

 

The next thing he knows, he's being hit in the chest by waves of cold, cold water. The current nearly pulls him under, but he manages to keep his head above the water, eyes searching wildly for his sister. He calls out her name, but it's drowned by the water pounding against the walls of the cave they're in.

"Rebekah!" Her name rips from his throat as he finally spots her golden head disappearing into the shadows.

Something seizes in his chest. Elijah is used to darkness—he's lived in it, dreamt in it, light and sound blurring in an out of an unyielding mist about him. But it is the shadows he fears, something about the way he can never be able to outrun it, how it swallows him whole; how, even as he almost escapes it, it just grows bigger, like a man whose shadow grows into monsters.

"Elijah!" Her voice rings about his ears, and he kicks his way to where she is and snatches her away from the shadows. A current knocks them over and they're swept ashore, his vice grip around his sister's waist not yielding. It's only when his shoulder hits cold, smooth stone that he allows Rebekah to crawl away.

"This is how it started," she tells him, and he nods. He feels chilled to the bone, but that cannot be—vampires don't feel the cold.

Rebekah's wringing water out of her sopping clothes. She looks pale and frightful, and he finds out exactly why: Henrik is standing a little ways before them, considering them thoughtfully.

The fist around his heart tightens even more, and if had not realised the cold of the cave he realizes it now: it creeps up his body and settles, trembling, in his limbs, and then freezes all thought altogether. The only thing he is aware of as the cold seizes him is his brother.

He has not seen Henrik's face in over a thousand years.

 

 

**x.**

"Elijah," Henrik says, his voice sharp against the graphite walls. "We have been expecting you." Rebekah grasps for his hand, and he knows for certainty in the shake of her fingers that this is not just a simple dream.

"Rebekah—"

"Just follow him, 'Lijah," she mumbles into his shoulder, before pulling him forward.

There's a mouth of light bursting through the darkness, and Henrik is suddenly running into it. Rebekah follows him, her hand leaving Elijah's, and for a moment he is so blinded by the light he almost forgets to hurry after them.

He keeps his eyes open through the glaring light, and then finds himself in a vast, white room. Rebekah and Henrik are nowhere to be seen. He walks on, his feet guiding him by instinct, and the deeper he goes he finds that he knows the way. Walls sprout from the ground and his bare feet sink into soft carpeting, and then he's in some sort of dining room. Odd. Familiar.

He steps closer to the fire to warm himself, but it's unnecessary. His clothes are now completely dry, and he finds that he is even wearing his usual Italian shoes.

His footsteps echo through the house. He hears noises from within the walls, whispers and hushed laughter, and follows it through corridors lined with paintings Klaus had stolen—" _Commandeered_ ," Klaus would have sneered with the slightest scoff—over the centuries. The moment his brother registered in his mind, Klaus seemed to step right out of the walls and right into him.

"Elijah," he sputters, just as Elijah utters a confused, "Niklaus?"

"Not this shit again _._ " Klaus grips at his jacket and slams him into the wall, paintings falling to the floor from the impact. Klaus hears the frames crack and he only slightly winces—but no, this is not real, those are not real, it  _can't_ be real— "What did you do?"

His brother's breath is hot and feverish on his face, and the name  _Silas_  is barely out of his mouth before he sees his brother's pupils dilate. His is slammed against the wall again, and this time a broken picture frame splinters into his back—he grits his teeth.

"What did you do, dear brother?" Klaus asks again, right through his teeth. His voice is lower, slower, like sap trickling down tree bark. Heavy, fluid, sweet—but Elijah knows to tread carefully, lest Klaus lowers his eyes, all fire and rage and irrationality burning right through the blue.

"Would you believe me if I said it was all in the name of family?" Elijah quips without a breath, carefully prying Klaus's fingers away from his windpipe. Klaus snarls, revealing his fangs. Him killing Mother had been _in the name of family_ , therefore utterly justifiable for forgiveness he recalls, and Elijah has to hide his satisfied smile when Klaus turns away, disgruntled.

Elijah straightens his tie and steps away from the wall. As he makes his way to the end of the hallway, Klaus following sullenly behind him, he knows that the marks Klaus left (purple and raw and blooming an ugly thing across his neck) would have gone by now.

As they would have it, the door at the end of the hall is locked, so they try a different route. Up a flight of stairs and down another hall, the door is locked as well. Elijah lets out a quiet groan, contemplating kicking it down, but it didn't seem right somehow.

He wonders when, in the five minutes Klaus's appearance placated him, had this manse shape-shift-and-tricked itself into a labyrinth. He steps down another hall, not waiting for Klaus to follow him, because he knows his brother will either way. The turn down a winding staircase into the drawing room, where he could have sworn he sees the familiar hem of a gown disappearing around a corner.

"Come on, Elijah!"

Wool dyed a rich red, lined with fur because they could afford it. He knows this dress.

He rounds the corner and sees Rebekah grinning at him from the dark, beckoning. She's smiling gleefully, the dress floating about her ankles as she turns to and fro. "I love the gown," she gushes. "Finn said I shouldn't wear it now, he thinks I'll spoil it over dinner, but I won't—oh I  _won't_ , trust me—"

She twirls, just for him. "I couldn't help trying it on, oh Elijah, it's  _beautiful_."

"I—I'm happy you're happy," Elijah says, finding his voice. She looks younger, despite not having aged at all. There is a flush in her cheeks, something red and rosy, and he reaches out a hand to touch—

" _Elijah_."

Elijah starts at the sound of Klaus's voice, and Rebekah's gone. He rests a hand against the cool stone of the wall, breathes in. Collects himself.

"Thought I'd burned this place down." Klaus looks around him. "Ingtham Mote," he says, as if Elijah needs reminding.

Coming home after five hundred years to find nothing but ash and pulverized debris can be quite disconcerting on the mind. He says nothing.

"Place looks good." Klaus offers to the silence. He sounds a bit shaken somehow, his voice straining into some semblance of indifference. It sounds twisted in his throat. Elijah watches the way his brother is careful not to touch anything, and wonders if he sees Katerina in the wooden benches and spiralled balustrades, the golden burnishes and crushed velvet.

"Darling Rebekah is here as well, I'm assuming?"

Elijah nods once and steps over to the fireplace, running his fingers across the mantelpiece until they find a notch in the smooth marble. He clicks it into place and the fireplace sinks into the ground, revealing an arch that led a way into gaping darkness, just tall enough for Finn, the tallest of them all, to duck through.

Elijah and Klaus stare at the dark hole before them, neither of them moving a muscle. The last time Elijah had seen this doorway was when he was fleeing the manse in 1492.

"To hell with this," Klaus growls, before stepping into the dark. As is his curse, Elijah follows.

He knows where this passage leads: to the damp smell of earth, to moss growing up the sides of trees, to a hidden shed that housed supplies and weaponry. He expects his shoes to crunch against pine cones and for his fingers to graze against cold stone, so cold it's almost wet.

What he doesn't expect at the end of the passage is a vast room of endless white—

and Kol sitting right in the middle of it, yelling at an Xbox.

 

 

 

**xi.**

"You stupid, worthless th…  _I said jump_ —" A crash and a bang, and Kol finally notices them. "Evening, brothers," he greets absently, mashing on the controls.

Klaus looks about as dumbfounded as Elijah feels.

 

 

 

**xii.**

Elijah tries not to let the metaphorical rug get tugged from under his feet again when he sees Finn materialize next to Kol, hands gripped onto his own controller. He steps into the room and more fixtures start to appear: windows that look like they ought to creak when pushed open, curtains that fall in drapes to the floor, oiled tables, pelts that stretched across the floor, the Wainscot armchair Klaus had accidentally scorched once. Elijah is suddenly aware Rebekah lounging on a chaise, looking unimpressed.

Next to her, is Henrik.

Elijah can't stop staring at him. Klaus is pacing the room, ducking under lamps that suddenly appear above him, scooting around side tables that sprout at his feet. "What the fuck," Klaus hisses as he all but vaults over a spindly menorah (Finn had some existential crises after his being turned, surprise surprise), "is going on?"

"Grand Theft Auto V," Finn says, gesturing with his controller. He's sitting in an armchair, Kol slouching on the floor by his feet. "Be quiet a moment, brother, while I run this man over with my tight automobile."

Finn pins a man into a brick wall with his battered Fiat, and there's the sickening crunch of bones breaking.

Ever bored, Rebekah yawns at the screech of wheels, Elijah pinches the bridge of his nose while Klaus, almost wolf-like in his defensiveness, prowls around. He's careful not to touch anything and gives Henrik a wide berth, but in doing so accidentally backs into a great oak chest, and winces.

"This could  _not_  be happening," he snarls, grabbing the lamp atop the chest and crashing it against the far wall. None of them bat an eyelid, and he reaches for the paintings lining the wall. He's about to hurl it right at Kol, when Henrik places a hand on his arm.

Klaus drops the painting to the floor, and follows, shaking.  _"Henrik."_

Elijah slips his shaking hands into his pockets, tries to steady the thrashing in his heart. And to think Rebekah had to go through this, all of this,  _alone_ —

He places a hand on her shoulder. "Was it like this the first time?"

"Every detail. Right down to Finn dying in the shoot out scene." Rebekah had somehow conjured a nail file out of thin air.

"You don't know that," Finn says furiously over his shoulder. The floor-to-ceiling screen in front of them glows red and then goes dark. "I died. Now I have to start all over again. I don't quite fancy having to run over a man twice." He throws his controller down for added measure.

"Glad you're here, 'Lijah," Kol enthuses through a mouthful of chips, eyes finally leaving his game. "Have a seat."

"I—think I'll stand." If he sits, Elijah doesn't add, he might remain seated for a very, very long time. "How did you know Finn was going to lose?"

Rebekah presses her lips together. "Well, because it happened the first time 'round."

"So time plays in a loop here?"

Her head tilts. "I—I don't quite know. Who the ruddy hell even knows how this place works?"

"Not us." Henrik is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Klaus. Elijah makes a move to join them, but finds that he's rooted to the spot. And then another question comes to mind. "Henrik, why are you here?"

Klaus still looks miserable, angry, perplexed, all at once. "Because he's  _dead_ , Elij—"

"Yes, I know that." Elijah presses his palms together, studying the way his youngest brother's eyes never seem to betray any sort of emotion. He's pale, and Elijah knows if he reaches out to touch him his skin would burn with ice. "Kol and Finn, they're on the Other Side because it's where they're meant to be, because it's made..."

Kol rolls his eyes and Finn makes a little sound in the back of his throat.

"...for the supernatural." It dawns on Klaus then, and he turns his head towards Henrik. Rebekah's nail-filing slows to a stop.

Henrik gives them a rueful sort of smile. It takes a while. And then:

" _Son of a bitch_ ," Klaus says in one long mournful tune; he finds his feet, scrubbing his face with his hand. When he retracts his hand, his eyes are shining, and he's glaring, his teeth are bared—he looks like he could be in pain, but before Elijah ascertain it Klaus's eyes are closed again, and he's turned away.

"Father didn't know," Henrik says quietly, getting to his feet as well. There's an apology set in his face that Elijah wants to rip off.

Henrik's footsteps barely make a sound. The only evidence of him coming nearer was his voice, flitting in and out in variations of whispers, reverberating around him. "How was he to? Mother was careful the second time around."

Klaus doesn't answer, but the trembling of his shoulders betrays him. Rebekah shifts in her seat, but Elijah presses down firmly on her shoulder.

Rebekah traces a questioning finger over his knuckles.  _Elijah?_

Elijah shakes his head once,  _He needs this_.

She bites her lip and nods.

Henrik steps closer to Klaus. He'd always moved quietly, their Henrik. "We would have been magnificent together, brother."

A broken sob escapes through Klaus's lips then, and now Henrik's beside him again, a hand on his back, a vessel Klaus reaches for hungrily as the storm shakes the seas inside his chest, crashing and raging and howling within him. Klaus reaches for him, and Henrik reaches right back, but instead of their hands meeting, Klaus's arm goes right through it.

He reels back, stumbling through Kol, who'd appeared behind him.

"Delightful, isn't it," Kol says flatly as Klaus trips over his feet.

Elijah can't take it any longer. "What  _is_ this place?"

Henrik leans against the oak chest, not quite smiling. "Isn't that the question?"

 

 

"Up until a day ago, we were on the Other Side," Kol says, fixing them a drink. Finn swigs heartily, Henrik stirs some spices into his before drinking. Rebekah takes the cup that was offered but doesn't drink it, as does Elijah. Klaus doesn't touch his at all.

"I thought this was the Other Side?" Elijah asks, the beginnings of a frown settling in his brow.

Rebekah leans in conspiratorially. "That's what I asked, too."

"This is Not Quite the Other Side." The words appear before them as if lit by fire, hovering in the space between them before Kol waves it away. "It's a labyrinth built out of the recesses of your mind, which is why everything you see here—" he gestures at the wine goblets lining the wall, the door that led to the salt cellar, "—is familiar to you."

Come to think of it, Elijah muses, this cup had been his favourite, five hundred years ago.

Rebekah takes a cautious sip of her drink. She grimaces when she realizes it's not wine. "Warm milk. Lovely. And why Ingtham Mote?"

"Henrik has never seen it," Finn answers, pouring himself another cupful from the jug he'd forbade Henrik and Rebekah to touch, ever the eldest brother. Elijah smirks into his own cup of mulled wine. "I didn't live here long before you decided to leave me for dead."

("Oh, don't start, brother," Klaus grumbles.)

"This place is built from memory," Rebekah says quietly. "Are we the only ones here?"

Finn exchanges a glance with Kol, and Elijah recalls the hushes voices he'd heard within the walls, the hard set of Klaus's jaw when he'd first appeared.

"Yes." The lie is easy. He looks at Klaus, who looks away.

"So why are we in Not Quite the Other Side?" As Rebekah says it, the words start to appear again.

"Stop that," Finn snaps irritably, and Kol relents. To Rebekah, he says: "This is a section of the realm made especially for little visits like these. Just not—"

"—not usually for us?"

"Yes."

Elijah prompts his chin in his hands. "Of course. Everything always has a loop hole. Qetsiyah must have made this place so she could goad Silas into joining the other side. With hallucinations of his dead lover, no doubt."

Klaus's head whips up. "What are they, then? Hallucinations? We can't  _touch_ them."

"Get your hand out of my face," Kol snaps. " _We're_  the ones who can't touch you. You're on our turf, remember?"

"So… let me get this straight. This is what you've been doing?" Klaus glances from his hand, to Kol, then back again. "This entire time?"

"Like I said before, we were on the  _Actual_  Other Side until about a day ago. There's… no Grand Theft Auto over there, if that's what you're wondering."

Elijah wasn't. He didn't really want to know. Rebekah tries to place a hand over Henrik's, but it passes right through.

"How does it feel like to be a ghost?" Henrik prompts, lifting one corner of his mouth.

"Good to know you haven't lost your sense of humour," Rebekah grumbles, but there's a fondness in it. "Darling, I'm not really dead."

Finn laughs darkly. "Over here you are."


End file.
